All songs written by James Wyatt Crosby (SOCAN). Produced by James Wyatt Crosby and moon:and:6.

About this album:

We started recording the final tracks for this album in February 2017. Before then, I had a mountain of demos for each song, different versions with different instrumentation and in different keys. Twins is like the sum of all those demos.

With these songs, we really went down the rabbit hole with each one of them. Working with Michael “moon:and:6” Chambers as producer was really necessary for me because he’s very meticulous and organized. I’m good at bringing creative ideas to the table, but for this project I needed someone like him to help me get all of those ideas lined up so that the songs fit together as a unit.

This record is a trip for me. Each of those songs has been my favourite at different times for different reasons. Each one is about specific personal situations, but I’m excited to hear how other people interpret it. —JWC

Written and performed by James Wyatt Crosby (SOCAN). Produced, mixed and mastered by moon:and:6 and James Wyatt Crosby.

About this song:

This song originally evolved from a sample of an old piece of medieval choral music. The sampled track was in Italian, but to me, the sample sounded like the words “Pray On It” so the lyrics in the verses came from that.

As far as the lyrics go, I think it was me basically talking to myself and trying to pump myself up and give myself an empowering message. I wrote the original demo a few years ago, when I was in a bit of a creative lull and I was working in this long term care facility in my hometown. It was pretty intense because these elderly people were dying in front of me almost every day. It was a strange period for me, but it made me take stock of what I was doing. It made me get my shit together and start being creative again. I wrote a lot of music during and after that period.

I worked with different people to get all the sounds for this song, and everyone brought their own unique style. It’s interesting to work one on one with different musicians because you get to know their style and musical idiosyncrasies in a really intimate way.

The song is in 6/4 which is interesting because it feels almost like a regular four-on-the-floor but it’s a little less obvious. Our idea when we started recording was to make an experimental dance track… something that’s really poppy and catchy but also has tons of strange elements and sonic textures. There’s a hell of a lot going on in this song: drones, tape machine effects, heavily effected guitars, analog synths, drum machines and live drums, sampled vocals, auto-tune, vocoder, theremin, white noise… Jesus, so many sounds. It’s definitely a dense song but all the elements work together to make something that feels really big. I can listen to it again and again and find new elements every time.

Throughout the recording process we were using Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies cards which was fun and actually surprisingly helpful. One of the cards we pulled early on was “Don’t be frightened of clichés” which gave us the confidence to mix in some some stereotypical dance track elements that we might not have otherwise used.

When I used to play this song live with my former band Garbagio it was always our last song and it was really different from all the other songs because it was more electronic and sample based. I remember hearing people singing “Pray on it! Pray on it!” after some of those shows and that was really cool. The big chorus seemed to get people excited and I remember someone saying it was a “#1 fat banger” which is amazing and hilarious. —JWC

Written and performed by James Wyatt Crosby (SOCAN). Produced, mixed and mastered by moon:and:6 and James Wyatt Crosby.

About this song:

I’d describe this song as being very soft and sweet, almost purposefully schmaltzy. We were trying to capture a kind of playful “lovey-dovey” feeling by experimenting with different sorts of instrumentation and I think we made something really pretty. –JWC